CU Alumna, Employee Dies at 87

Elizabeth Woods McEvoy, Columbia alumna and former employee and a long-time Morningside Heights resident, died on March 2 at St. Luke's Hospital, from pneumonia. She was 87 years old and had suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

McEvoy was married to Leo McEvoy, a former Columbia assistant track coach. They met when she was locked out of her apartment and had to use her building's fire escape to slip through the kitchen window.

McEvoy worked as an office assistant for former University President Grayson Kirk for about four years and in the off-campus housing office of Butler Hall for about two years. She graduated from the School of General Studies with a bachelor's degree in 1987. She lived in an apartment on Morningside Drive for over 50 years, and she frequently attended Columbia track meets and football games with her husband.

Throughout her life, McEvoy enjoyed ballroom dancing and piano music. After growing up in Connecticut and working for a Hartford insurance company, she was anxious to see the world. She volunteered to serve with the American Red Cross, and after the war she traveled around Europe and served in Tokyo.

Her son, John, said that his mother had a knack for storytelling. After the bombing of Hiroshima, McEvoy and a British Red Cross volunteer drove to the scene in a Jeep. John said that she was devastated by what she saw.

McEvoy also frequently told sotries about working on the University president's secretarial staff, John said. One day, a retiring employee from the archives office came to turn in documents which were discovered to be from the Manhattan Project. The office called the FBI, which quickly came to take them away.

In 1965, her younger brother, Joseph, was killed in a car accident that also seriously injured his wife, Susan. The McEvoys took in the couple's four children, squeezing eight people into a two-bedroom and one-bathroom apartment on Morningside Drive for nearly two years. McEvoy's youngest son, Hugh, was shot and killed at the age of 16 by another youth in 1973. These two major tragedies led McEvoy to turn to the Catholic religion, her husband said.

McEvoy also effortlessly cooked multiple-course meals for large groups of people, especially for holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. When she began burning pots, John said it was the first indication of Alzheimer's disease "because it was so out of character." For the last five years of her life, an assistant and her son provided her with personal care.

"Her manners never left her," John said. "She was the same person. Maybe she didn't remember your name, but ... she was never angry or aggressive. She was easy to care for."

"Even up to the end, she was gracious," said McEvoy's niece, Ann Marie Woods, who was one of the children who lived with McEvoy for two years. "A lot of the time, people get angry or cross, but she just stayed her sweet self. ... She was very young at heart and a very spirited woman."